Haaland reaches 60 Champions League goals faster than anyone in history

Four goals in two matches and a number that already sounds absurd: 61 goals in 60 Champions League appearances. That is how simple, and how brutal, Erling Haaland's start has been in the competition he loves most, the one where the ball seems magnetized to his boots.

The Norwegian arrives at this season surrounded by noise. Manchester City is still dealing with the open financial corruption scandal, and for now nobody knows what punishment the club might face. But Haaland, true to form, seems oblivious to all of it once he steps onto the field. In the Premier League he tops the scoring charts with 8 goals, and in the Champions League there is not even a debate about who leads the way: it is him.

The "Android" already has 4 goals so far in this season's league phase: a brace in the win over Porto on matchday one and another brace in the loss to PSG last week. That puts him level at the top of the scoring charts with Tresoldi of Club Brugge and Demirovic of Stuttgart, though the story behind his numbers tells a completely different tale.

The youngest to reach 60

At 26 years and 85 days old, Haaland became the youngest player to reach 60 Champions League goals in the history of the competition, surpassing names like Mbappe, Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. To put that into perspective: Messi hit that mark at 26 years and 86 days, just one day after the Norwegian; Mbappe did it at 26 years and 284 days; Cristiano at 29 years and 21 days; and Raul Gonzalez at 30 years and 237 days.

But there is another number that might matter even more: nobody needed fewer matches than him to get there. Haaland reached the mark in 60 games, split between Salzburg, Dortmund and Manchester City. Lewandowski, next on that list, needed 85. Mbappe, 89. Cristiano, 98. Benzema, 111. And Raul, 115. The gap is not small.

If there are two teams that would rather not see Haaland lining up against them, it is RB Leipzig and Sevilla: he has scored 6 goals against each of them in 7 matches. PSG has not fared much better either, conceding 5 goals to him, including the brace from last week.

A debut that already hinted at all this

The first sign came on September 17, 2019. That night, in a 6-2 rout of Genk, Haaland became the first player to score a hat trick in the opening 45 minutes of his Champions League debut. It took him less than 3 minutes to get on the scoresheet. Looking back, it was an introduction that already hinted at everything that was to come.

With City, his 38 goals make him the club's all-time leading scorer in the Champions League, ahead of Sergio "Kun" Aguero's 36 and Raheem Sterling's 24, who rounds out the podium.

With City's sanctions still hanging in the balance and the future of its star players uncertain, Haaland still has league phase matches ahead against AEK, Leipzig (his favorite victim), Napoli, Barcelona, Lens and Sporting. If the trend holds, his list of records could keep growing.